The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

Norton dropped his uplifted arm with a groan:

"Thank you," he murmured in tones scarcely audible. "I have your answer!" – he paused and looked at her curiously – "And you love him?"

The girl hesitated for just an instant, her blue eyes flashed and she drew her strong, young figure erect:

"Yes! And I'm proud of it. His love has lifted me into the sunlight and made the world glorious – made me love everything in it – every tree and every flower and every living thing that moves and feels – "

She stopped abruptly and lifted her flushed face to his:

"I've learned to love you, in spite of your harshness to me – I love you because you are his father!"

He turned from her and then wheeled suddenly, his face drawn with pain:

"Now, I must be frank, I must be brutal. I must know the truth without reservation – how far has this thing gone?"

"I – I – don't understand you!"

"Marriage is impossible! I told you that and you must have realized it."

Her head drooped:

"You said so – "

"Impossible – utterly impossible! And you know it" – he drew a deep breath. "What – what are your real relations?"

"My – real – relations?" she gasped.

"Answer me now, before God! I'll hold your secret sacred – your life and his may depend on it" – his voice dropped to a tense whisper. "Your love is pure and unsullied?"

The girl's eyes flashed with rage:

"As pure and unsullied as his dead mother's for you!"

"Thank God!" he breathed. "I believe you – but I had to know, child! I had to know – there are big, terrible reasons why I had to know."

A tear slowly stole down Helen's flushed cheeks as she quietly asked:

"Why – why should you insult and shame me by asking that question?"

"My knowledge of your birth."

The girl smiled sadly:

"Yet you might have guessed that I had learned to cherish honor and purity before I knew I might not claim them as my birthright!"

"Forgive me, child," he said contritely, "if in my eagerness, my fear, my anguish, I hurt you. But I had to ask that question! I had to know. Your answer gives me courage" – he paused and his voice quivered with deep intensity – "you really love Tom?"

"With a love beyond words!"

"The big, wonderful love that comes to the human soul but once?"

"Yes!"

His eyes were piercing to the depths now:

"With the deep, unselfish yearning that asks nothing for itself and seeks only the highest good of its beloved?"

"Yes – yes," she answered mechanically and, pausing, looked again into his burning eyes; "but you frighten me – " she grasped a chair for support, recovered herself and went on rapidly – "you mustn't ask me to give him up – I won't give him up! Poor and friendless, with a shadow over my life and everything against me, I have won him and he's mine! I have the right to his love – I didn't ask to be born. I must live my own life. I have as much right to happiness as you. Why must I bear the sins of my father and mother? Have I broken the law? Haven't I a heart that can ache and break and cry for joy?"

He allowed the first paroxysm of her emotion to spend itself before he replied, and then in quiet tones said:

"You must give him up!"

"I won't! I won't, I tell you!" she said through her set teeth as she suddenly swung her strong, young form before him. "I won't give him up! His love has made life worth living and I'm going to live it! I don't care what you say – he's mine – and you shall not take him from me!"

Norton was stunned by the fiery intensity with which her answer had been given. There was no mistaking the strength of her character. Every vibrant note of her voice had rung with sincerity, purity, the justice of her cause, and the consciousness of power. He was dealing with no trembling schoolgirl's mind, filled with sentimental dreams. A woman, in the tragic strength of a great nature, stood before him. He felt this greatness instinctively and met it with reverence. It could only be met thus, and as he realized its strength, his heart took fresh courage. His own voice became tender, eager, persuasive:

"But suppose, my dear, I show you that you will destroy the happiness and wreck the life of the man you love?"

"Impossible! He knows that I'm nameless and his love is all the deeper, truer and more manly because he realizes that I am defenseless."

"But suppose I convince you?"

"You can't!"

"Suppose," he said in a queer tone, "I tell you that the barrier between you is so real, so loathsome – "

"Loathsome?" she repeated with a start.

"So loathsome," he went on evenly, "that when he knows the truth, whether he wishes it or not, he will instinctively turn from you with a shudder."

"I won't believe it!"

"Suppose I prove to you that marriage would wreck both your life and his" – he gazed at her with trembling intensity – "would you give him up to save him?"

She held his eye steadily:

"Yes – I'd die to save him!"

A pitiful stillness followed. The man scarcely moved. His lips quivered and his eyes grew dim. He looked at her pathetically and motioned her to a seat.

"And if I convince you," he went on tenderly, "you will submit yourself to my advice and leave America?"

The blue eyes never flinched as she firmly replied:

"Yes. But I warn you that no such barrier can exist."

"Then I must prove to you that it does." He drew a deep breath and watched her. "You realize the fact that a man who marries a nameless girl bars himself from all careers of honor?"

"The honor of fools, yes – of the noble and wise, no!"

"You refuse to see that the shame which shadows a mother's life will smirch her children, and like a deadly gangrene at last eat the heart out of her husband's love?"

"My faith in him is too big – "

"You can conceive of no such barrier?"

"No!"

"In the first rush of love," he replied kindly, "you feel this. Emotion obscures reason. But there are such barriers between men and women."

"Name one!"

His brow clouded, his lips moved to speak and stopped. It was more difficult to frame in speech than he had thought. His jaw closed with firm decision at last and he began calmly:

"I take an extreme case. Suppose, for example, your father, a proud Southern white man, of culture, refinement and high breeding, forgot for a moment that he was white and heard the call of the Beast, and your mother were an octoroon – what then?"

The girl flushed with anger:

"Such a barrier, yes! Nothing could be more loathsome. But why ask me so disgusting a question? No such barrier could possibly exist between us!"

Norton's eyes were again burning into her soul as he asked in a low voice:

"Suppose it does?"

The girl smiled with a puzzled look:

"Suppose it does? Of course, you're only trying to prove that such an impossible barrier might exist! And for the sake of argument I agree that it would be real" – she paused and her breath came in a quick gasp. She sprang to her feet clutching at her throat, trembling from head to foot – "What do you mean by looking at me like that?"

Norton lowered his head and barely breathed the words:

"That is the barrier between you!"

Helen looked at him dazed. The meaning was too big and stupefying to be grasped at once.

"Why, of course, major," she faltered, "you just say that to crush me in the argument. But I've given up the point. I've granted that such a barrier may exist and would be real. But you haven't told me the one between us."

The man steeled his heart, turned his face away and spoke in gentle tones:

"I am telling you the pitiful, tragic truth – your mother is a negress – "

With a smothered cry of horror the girl threw herself on him and covered his mouth with her hand, half gasping, half screaming her desperate appeal:

"Stop! don't – don't say it! – take it back! Tell me that it's not true – tell me that you only said it to convince me and I'll believe you. If the hideous thing is true – for the love of God deny it now! If it's true – lie to me" – her voice broke and she clung to Norton's arms with cruel grip – "lie to me! Tell me that you didn't mean it, and I'll believe you – truth or lie, I'll never question it! I'll never cross your purpose again – I'll do anything you tell me, major" – she lifted her streaming eyes and began slowly to sink to her knees – "see how humble – how obedient I am! You don't hate me, do you? I'm just a poor, lonely girl, helpless and friendless now at your feet" – her head sank into her hands until the beautiful brown hair touched the floor – "have mercy! have mercy on me!"

Norton bent low and fumbled for the trembling hand. He couldn't see and for a moment words were impossible.

He found her hand and pressed it gently:

"I'm sorry, little girl! I'd lie to you if I could – but you know a lie don't last long in this world. I've lied about you before – I'd lie now to save you this anguish, but it's no use – we all have to face things in the end!"

With a mad cry of pain, the girl sprang to her feet and staggered to the table:

"Oh, God, how could any man with a soul – any living creature, even a beast of the field – bring me into the world – teach me to think and feel, to laugh and cry, and thrust me into such a hell alone! My proud father – I could kill him!"

Norton extended his hands to her in a gesture of instinctive sympathy:

"Come, you'll see things in a calm light to-morrow, you are young and life is all before you!"

"Yes!" she cried fiercely, "a life of shame – a life of insult, of taunts, of humiliation, of horror! The one thing I've always loathed was the touch of a negro – "

She stopped suddenly and lifted her hand, staring with wildly dilated eyes at the nails of her finely shaped fingers to find if the telltale marks of negro blood were there which she had seen on Cleo's. Finding none, the horror in her eyes slowly softened into a look of despairing tenderness as she went on:

"The one passionate yearning of my soul has been to be a mother – to feel the breath of a babe on my heart, to hear it lisp my name and know a mother's love – the love I've starved for – and now, it can never be!"

She had moved beyond the table in her last desperate cry and Norton followed with a look of tenderness:

"Nonsense," he cried persuasively, "you're but a child yourself. You can go abroad where no such problem of white and black race exists. You can marry there and be happy in your home and little ones, if God shall give them!"

She turned on him savagely:

"Well, God shall not give them! I'll see to that! I'm young, but I'm not a fool. I know something of the laws of life. I know that Tom is not like you" – she turned and pointed to the portrait on the wall – "he is like his great-grandfather! Mine may have been – "

Her voice choked with passion. She grasped a chair with one hand and tore at the collar of her dress with the other. She had started to say "mine may have been a black cannibal!" and the sheer horror of its possibility had strangled her. When she had sufficiently mastered her feelings to speak she said in a strange muffled tone:

"I ask nothing of God now – if I could see Him, I'd curse Him to His face!"

"Come, come!" Norton exclaimed, "this is but a passing ugly fancy – such things rarely happen – "

"But they do happen!" she retorted slowly. "I've known one such tragedy, of a white mother's child coming into the world with the thick lips, kinky hair, flat nose and black skin of a cannibal ancestor! She killed herself when she was strong enough to leap out the window" – her voice dropped to a dreamy chant – "yes, blood will tell – there's but one thing for me to do! I wonder, with the yellow in me, if I'll have the courage."

Norton spoke with persuasive tenderness:

"You mustn't think of such madness! I'll send you abroad at once and you can begin life over again – "

Helen suddenly snatched the chair to which she had been holding out of her way and faced Norton with flaming eyes:

"I don't want to be an exile! I've been alone all my miserable orphan life! I don't want to go abroad and die among strangers! I've just begun to live since I came here! I love the South – it's mine – I feel it – I know it! I love its blue skies and its fields – I love its people – they are mine! I think as you think, feel as you feel – "

She paused and looked at him queerly:

"I've learned to honor, respect and love you because I've grown to feel that you stand for what I hold highest, noblest and best in life" – the voice died in a sob and she was silent.

The man turned away, crying in his soul:

"O God, I'm paying the price now!"

"What can I do!" she went on at last. "What is life worth since I know this leper's shame? There are millions like me, yes. If I could bend my back and be a slave there are men and women who need my services. And there are men I might know – yes – but I can't – I can't! I'm not a slave. I'm not bad. I can't stoop. There's but one thing!"

Norton's face was white with emotion:

"I can't tell you, little girl, how sorry I am" – his voice broke. He turned, suddenly extended his hand and cried hoarsely: "Tell me what I can do to help you – I'll do anything on this earth that's within reason!"

The girl looked up surprised at his anguish, wondering vaguely if he could mean what he had said, and then threw herself at him in a burst of sudden, fierce rebellion, her voice, low and quivering at first, rising to the tragic power of a defiant soul in combat with overwhelming odds:

"Then give me back the man I love – he's mine! He's mine, I tell you, body and soul! God – gave – him – to – me! He's your son, but I love him! He's my mate! He's of age – he's no longer yours! His time has come to build his own home – he's mine – not yours! He's my life – and you're tearing the very heart out of my body!"

The white, trembling figure slowly crumpled at his feet.

He took both of her hands, and lifted her gently:

"Pull yourself together, child. It's hard, I know, but you begin to realize that you must bear it. You must look things calmly in the face now."

The girl's mouth hardened and she answered with bitterness:

"Yes, of course – I'm nobody! We must consider you" – she staggered to a chair and dropped limply into it, her voice a whisper – "we must consider Tom – yes – yes – we must, too – I know that – "

Norton pressed eagerly to her side and leaned over the drooping figure:

"You can begin to see now that I was right," he pleaded. "You love Tom – he's worth saving – you'll do as I ask and give him up?"

The sensitive young face was convulsed with an agony words could not express and the silence was pitiful. The man bending over her could hear the throb of his own heart. A quartet of serenaders celebrating the victory of the election stopped at the gate and the soft strains of the music came through the open window. Norton felt that he must scream in a moment if she did not answer. He bent low and softly repeated:

"You'll do as I ask now, and give him up?"

The tangled mass of brown hair sank lower and her answer was a sigh of despair:

"Yes!"

The man couldn't speak at once. His eyes filled. When he had mastered his voice he said eagerly:

"There's but one way, you know. You must leave at once without seeing him."

She lifted her face with a pleading look:

"Just a moment – without letting him know what has passed between us – just one last look into his dear face?"

He shook his head kindly:

"It isn't wise – "

"Yes, I know," she sighed. "I'll go at once."

He drew his watch and looked at it hurriedly:

"The first train leaves in thirty minutes. Get your hat, a coat and travelling bag and go just as you are. I'll send your things – "

"Yes – yes" – she murmured.

"I'll join you in a few days in New York and arrange your future. Leave the house immediately. Tom mustn't see you. Avoid him as you cross the lawn. I'll have a carriage at the gate in a few minutes."

The little head sank again:

"I understand."

He looked uncertainly at the white drooping figure. The serenaders were repeating the chorus of the old song in low, sweet strains that floated over the lawn and stole through the house in weird ghost-like echoes. He returned to her chair and bent over her:

"You won't stop to change your dress, you'll get your hat and coat and go just as you are – at once?"

The brown head nodded slowly and he gazed at her tenderly:

"You've been a brave little girl to-night" – he lifted his hand to place it on her shoulder in the first expression of love he had ever given. The hand paused, held by the struggle of the feelings of centuries of racial pride and the memories of his own bitter tragedy. But the pathos of her suffering and the heroism of her beautiful spirit won. The hand was gently lowered and pressed the soft, round shoulder.

A sob broke from the lonely heart, and her head drooped until it lay prostrate on the table, the beautiful arms outstretched in helpless surrender.

Norton staggered blindly to the door, looked back, lifted his hand and in a quivering voice, said:

"I can never forget this!"

His long stride quickly measured the distance to the gate, and a loud cheer from the serenaders roused the girl from her stupor of pain.

In a moment they began singing again, a love song, that tore her heart with cruel power.

"Oh, God, will they never stop?" she cried, closing her ears with her hands in sheer desperation.

She rose, crossed slowly to the window and looked out on the beautiful moonlit lawn at the old rustic seat where her lover was waiting. She pressed her hand on her throbbing forehead, walked to the center of the room, looked about her in a helpless way and her eye rested on the miniature portrait of Tom. She picked it up and gazed at it tenderly, pressed it to her heart, and with a low sob felt her way through the door and up the stairs to her room.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PARTING

Tom had grown impatient, waiting in their sheltered seat on the lawn for Helen to return. She had gone on a mysterious mission to see Minerva, laughingly refused to tell him its purpose, but promised to return in a few minutes. When half an hour had passed without a sign he reconnoitered to find Minerva, and to his surprise she, too, had disappeared.

He returned to his trysting place and listened while the serenaders sang their first song. Unable to endure the delay longer he started to the house just as his father hastily left by the front door, and quickly passing the men at the gate, hurried down town.

The coast was clear and he moved cautiously to fathom, if possible, the mystery of Helen's disappearance. Finding no trace of her in Minerva's room, he entered the house and, seeing nothing of her in the halls, thrust his head in the library and found it empty. He walked in, peeping around with a boyish smile expecting her to leap out and surprise him. He opened the French window and looked for her on the porch. He hurried back into the room with a look of surprised disappointment and started to the door opening on the hall of the stairway. He heard distinctly the rustle of a dress and the echo on the stairs of the footstep he knew so well.

He gave a boyish laugh, tiptoed quickly to the old-fashioned settee, dropped behind its high back and waited her coming.

Helen had hastily packed a travelling bag and thrown a coat over her arm. She slowly entered the library to replace the portrait she had taken, kissed it and started with feet of lead and set, staring eyes to slip through the lawn and avoid Tom as she had promised.

As she approached the corner of the settee the boy leaped up with a laugh:

"Where have you been?"

With a quick movement of surprise she threw the bag and coat behind her back. Luckily he had leaped so close he could not see.

"Where've you been?" he repeated.

"Why, I've just come from my room," she replied with an attempt at composure.

"What have you got your hat for?"

She flushed the slightest bit:

"Why, I was going for a walk."

"With a veil – at night – what have you got that veil for?"

The boyish banter in his tones began to yield to a touch of wonder.

Helen hesitated:

"Why, the crowds of singing and shouting men on the streets. I didn't wish to be recognized, and I wanted to hear what the speakers said."

"You were going to leave me and go alone to the speaker's stand?"

"Yes. Your father is going to see you and I was nervous and frightened and wanted to pass the time until you were free again" – she paused, looked at him intently and spoke in a queer monotone – "the negroes who can't read and write have been disfranchised, haven't they?"

"Yes," he answered mechanically, "the ballot should never have been given them."

"Yet there's something pitiful about it after all, isn't there, Tom?" She asked the question with a strained wistfulness that startled the boy.

He answered automatically, but his keen, young eyes were studying with growing anxiety every movement of her face and form and every tone of her voice:

"I don't see it," he said carelessly.

She laid her left hand on his arm, the right hand still holding her bag and coat out of sight.

"Suppose," she whispered, "that you should wake up to-morrow morning and suddenly discover that a strain of negro blood poisoned your veins – what would you do?"

Tom frowned and watched her with a puzzled look:

"Never thought of such a thing!"

She pressed his arm eagerly:

"Think – what would you do?"

"What would I do?" he repeated in blank amazement.

"Yes."

His eyes were holding hers now with a steady stare of alarm. The questions she asked didn't interest him. Her glittering eyes and trembling hand did. Studying her intently he said lightly:

"To be perfectly honest, I'd blow my brains out."

With a cry she staggered back and threw her hand instinctively up as if to ward a blow:

"Yes – yes, you would – wouldn't you?"

He was staring at her now with blanched face and she was vainly trying to hide her bag and coat.

He seized her arms:

"Why are you so excited? Why do you tremble so?" – he drew the arm around that she was holding back – "What is it? What's the matter?"

His eye rested on the bag, he turned deadly pale and she dropped it with a sigh.

"What – what – does this mean?" he gasped. "You are trying to leave me without a word?"

She staggered and fell limp into a seat:

"Oh, Tom, the end has come, and I must go!"

"Go!" he cried indignantly, "then I go, too!"

"But you can't, dear!"

"And why not?"

"Your father has just told me the whole hideous secret of my birth – and it's hopeless!"

"What sort of man do you think I am? What sort of love do you think I've given you? Separate us after the solemn vows we've given to each other! Neither man nor the devil can come between us now!"

She looked at him wistfully:

"It's sweet to hear such words – though I know you can't make them good."

"I'll make them good," he broke in, "with every drop of blood in my veins – and no coward has ever borne my father's name – it's good blood!"

"That's just it – and blood will tell. It's the law of life and I've given up."

"Well, I haven't given up," he protested, "remember that! Try me with your secret – I laugh before I hear it!"

With a gleam of hope in her deep blue eyes she rose trembling:

"You really mean that? If I go an outcast you would go with me?"

"Yes – yes."

"And if a curse is branded on my forehead you'll take its shame as yours?"

"Yes."

She laid her hand on his arm, looked long and yearningly into his eyes, and said:

"Your father has just told me that I am a negress – my mother is an octoroon!"

The boy flinched involuntarily, stared in silence an instant, and his form suddenly stiffened:

"I don't believe a word of it! My father has been deceived. It's preposterous!"

Helen drew closer as if for shelter and clung to his hand wistfully:

"It does seem a horrible joke, doesn't it? I can't realize it. But it's true. The major gave me his solemn word in tears of sympathy. He knew both my father and mother. I am a negress!"

The boy's arm unconsciously shrank the slightest bit from her touch while he stared at her with wildly dilated eyes and spoke in a hoarse whisper: